


A Fool for Fashion

by lillianmmalter



Series: Sleepless Nights [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Growing Up, Parenting Hassles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9674519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: After a long day at work, Peggy just wants to relax in the company of her family. Unfortunately, new crises are never far away.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ellix for beta services!

**September 1964**

Peggy closed the back door behind her with a sigh, at least an hour too late to eat dinner with her family, as was becoming annoyingly common lately. She worried some days they’d start to forget what she looked like. 

Reflexively, she hung her keys on their hook on the wall as had become habit since marrying Daniel, and began shrugging off her jacket when she heard his dulcet tones echoing back at her from the living room.

“What were you thinking?!”

Oh dear. 

And that sounded like Angela saying something back to him, though she couldn’t decipher what at this distance. Peggy had hoped coming home to her own version of domestic bliss tonight could offer a respite from the chaos and suspicion at work, but apparently not. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to gird herself before briskly walking in their direction. When those two set their minds to it they could row like East End fishwives, and Peggy simply did not have the patience to deal with it tonight.

Absently, she wondered if Daniel had finally found out about Angela kissing Roy Tomlinson behind the gym a week ago. Technically, even Peggy wasn’t supposed to know, but Angela always underestimated the power of gossiping housewives, no fewer than six of whom kept Peggy up to date on the goings on of both her children. Of course, only two of them did it out of friendship to Peggy herself. The rest thought they were getting one up on her and her deplorable insistence on going to work, nevermind that Peggy’s children had near perfect grades and were well-liked by most of their teachers while at least three of the women were constantly pulling their progeny out of detention or pushing them into tutoring.

Peggy did her best not to be smug.

To Peggy’s surprise, Angela’s sometime friend, Connie Figueroa, was the first person she saw on entering the living room. The girl looked shamefaced and slightly terrified, hunching her shoulders and using the unnaturally straightened sheet of her thick, dark hair to hide behind.

It was Angela, however, who caught Peggy’s attention and held it. A large chunk of hair at the top of her head appeared to have been burned right off, the remaining strands crisp and frizzled even from a distance.

“You could have hurt yourself, Lala! You could have set yourself on fire and then where would you be?”

“Don’t call me Lala,” Angela said, pouting even through the shocked horror Peggy could see crackling along every inch of her gangly frame.

“What on earth happened?” Peggy asked before Daniel could wind himself up to shout anything else.

His eyes were still wild with worry, but his shoulders sank in relief as he turned to her. No doubt he thought backup had arrived, though from what she could see, Peggy wasn’t certain she’d be taking his side of things.

“Lala decided to try ironing her hair straight. With the clothes iron,” Daniel ground out. Angela muttered mutinously about the nickname again, but added nothing in her own defense.

Peggy raised an eyebrow. “I take it the experiment didn’t work.”

“We got Connie’s hair straight,” Angela said.

Connie somehow managed to make herself smaller at the renewed attention. Peggy took pity on her and ignored her for the time being.

“But not yours,” Peggy said, turning back to her daughter and allowing a little of her interrogation voice to slip through. Angela hated it when she did that, so she did her best to tread carefully with it.

“The iron got too hot.” Angela was pouting as intensely as she ever had as a toddler.

“I don’t understand why you felt you needed to iron your hair anyway,” Daniel grumbled. Peggy shot him a look and he quieted.

Angela shifted where she stood, her arms crossed tightly, defensively, over her budding chest. She looked about thirty seconds away from bursting into tears.

“I think it’s time Connie went home for the evening,” Peggy said. “Would you take her, Daniel?”

He shot her a displeased look, but agreed and the girls said a quick, subdued goodbye. After they left, Peggy stood, hands on hips for a full minute simply watching Angela as she shuffled in place and avoided her eye.

“It was an accident,” Angela finally muttered. Her chin jutted out in a familiar way.

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Well of course it was an accident. You don’t expect me to believe you’d burn your hair off on a school night on purpose, do you?”

At this, Angela burst into tears. Peggy sighed and softened her posture, crossing the rest of the distance between them and taking her in her arms. The acrid smell of singed hair was almost overwhelming up close.

“It’s alright, Darling,” she said softly, petting Angela’s head and back to soothe her. “It’ll grow back.”

Angela just cried harder.

After a while, Peggy pulled back a bit to better see just what the damage was. She grimaced. There was really no way of hiding it with the length her hair was now, not even a pony tail would do. There was nothing else for it.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to sport a much shorter style now,” Peggy said. Angela’s sobs turned to wails and she pulled away to throw herself onto the couch. Peggy blamed her namesake for teaching her such hysterics.

“Really, it’s not that bad. We’ll call Ana. I’m sure she can work her magic on you and tomorrow no one will be able to tell there was ever anything wrong.”

She might as well have been talking to the air for all Angela seemed to have heard her. Peggy sighed and walked back into the kitchen to pick up the family phone. As she dialed the number, she had a brief moment of worry that perhaps the Jarvises were out of town and she simply didn’t remember, but two rings in, Ana picked up the phone and Peggy sighed in relief.

“Ana, it’s Peggy. Angela’s gotten herself into a bit of a pickle and I’m afraid we need you to come to the rescue.”

And if Angela wasn’t gracious about it, Peggy would make sure there was hell to pay.

 

Three hours later, Peggy entered her bedroom to find Daniel already in bed. He looked up from the book he was reading with a wary expression.

“Does she look like a boy?” he asked.

Peggy rolled her eyes and kicked off her heels, reveling in the ability to finally unpinch her toes and squish them into the carpet.

“She looks like a twelve year old girl who’s just had all her hair chopped off,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse to prepare for bed. “She’s devastated. Even Ana couldn’t spin it for her, though I must say, she outdid herself in making the best of it. Julie Andrews would be green with envy.”

“So she looks like a boy,” Daniel said, sighing.

Peggy huffed and threw her blouse at him, nailing him in the face. “It’s just hair. Honestly, I don’t know why you two are getting so worked up over it. It’s not like she’s lost it forever; it’ll grow back.”

“And in the meantime she won’t look like herself.”

Peggy glared at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. She’d never seen him pout like that.

Rolling her eyes, Peggy stepped out of her skirt and laid it across the back of the chair Daniel used to get dressed, then unhooked and rolled down her stockings. He still wasn’t looking at her. Fine then.

“You know, I was actually thinking of getting something similar,” she said. “It would be freeing to not have to bother curling or styling it anymore. Or at least not to the extent I do now. What do you think?”

Daniel looked at her in horror.

“Peggy, no. You can’t.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Peggy, you-”

“Would I be less of a woman if I cut off all my hair?” she asked, sauntering toward him. “Would you find me less attractive? Repulsive, even, if I didn’t have long hair for you to play with?” She climbed onto the bed to straddle his lap and grinned at the unimpressed look he shot her.

“Very funny.”

“You’re the one being ridiculous, Darling.”

His hands went to her waist, but she fended him off and climbed down from the bed again to finish getting changed.

“She doesn’t look any less feminine now than she did this morning,” she said.

“Girls should have long hair.”

Peggy dropped her girdle to the floor and spun around to glare at him, hands firmly on her hips. “Do I need to call Edith?”

Daniel winced. She could see him trying to mentally backtrack the conversation.

“I just meant-”

“I’m not sure I particularly care what you meant.”

Daniel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Peggy pulled on her pajamas and sat at her vanity, snatching up her cold cream to remove her makeup and hide her face for a few moments. Girls are supposed to have long hair, what bollocks. Daniel was supposed to be better than that. He _was_ better than that.

“She’s not our little girl anymore,” Daniel said, his voice low and slightly mournful.

Peggy sighed. “She’s twelve, Daniel. She’s not going off to college or getting married.”

“I know, it’s just. She’s suddenly paying more attention to how what she looks like affects those around her than to things I swore she was still interested in two months ago. Before they started screaming, all she and Connie could talk about were the Beatles and boys. Which is basically the same thing.”

“It happens.”

“Roy Tomlinson is two years older than she is.”

Peggy bit her lip. Did he know? Should she tell him? It wouldn’t do him the least good, especially not in the mood he was in now, but if he didn’t know then he’d be angry at her from keeping it from him. They weren’t meant to have secrets from each other when it came to the kids.

“He is,” she said, revealing nothing.

“You know she kissed him, right? Behind the gym after school like that was supposed to offer them any privacy at all.”

Well, that answered that question.

“I did.”

“She shouldn’t be kissing anybody yet. Definitely not boys older than she is.”

“I thought you told me you had your first kiss at eleven. Or was that someone else?” Peggy asked, raising an eyebrow at him through the mirror.

“That was different.”

“Why? Because you were a boy?”

“Because the girl I kissed was in my class and there weren’t any tongues involved. I didn’t even know French kissing was a thing until I was actually in France.”

Peggy turned around fully and stared at him with big eyes. “She was _French kissing_ him?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“She and Connie talked about it at length tonight, both before and after dinner. I don’t think she realizes just how much sound carries from her room to the kitchen.”

Peggy blinked, her stomach knotting. Kissing at 12 was one thing, but kissing with tongues… She’d have to find a way to discredit the young Mr. Tomlinson in Angela’s eyes before things got any more out of hand.

“Not so okay with it anymore, are you?” Daniel said, a smug twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, shut up.”

He grinned and beckoned her to bed and she went, cuddling into his side as she always did when they were both still awake. Too often lately, she either came home after he was already asleep or he was downstairs, pounding away his insomnia on that old typewriter of his. She hadn’t even realized until now how much she missed this.

She smoothed a hand up and down his chest and curled further into him. The look on his face when she came home tonight…

“Did she scare you horribly earlier?” she asked.

Daniel huffed a sigh that ruffled the hair on Peggy’s head. “That might be an understatement. I haven’t heard screams that bloodcurdling since the old radio shows. I thought someone had broken into the house.”

Peggy barely stopped herself from shuddering at the thought. Both of them had far too many enemies for that not to be a constant concern. Calling the prospect a nightmare was an understatement.

“At least we can be grateful it wasn’t that.”

“Mm.”

One of Daniel’s hands came up to massage the tense muscles of her neck and Peggy hummed at the relief of it. She was carrying far too much on her shoulders and they both knew it, just as they both knew she wouldn’t willingly relinquish her responsibilities any time soon. Probably not even unwillingly. It was wonderful just to lay here with Daniel in the comfort of their bed. It was all she’d wanted since lunch.

“Does she really look like Julie Andrews?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, please don’t start that again. The day’s been long enough already.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Just, didn’t she throw a fit over looking like Mary Poppins? That movie’s for babies, remember?”

Ah yes, that charming argument that had Daniel privately sulking about the kids growing up too soon for a full week.

“She did scowl at Ana when she mentioned it, but fortunately she caught my glare and kept mum.”

“She’s cute when she scowls.”

“When she’s not scowling at you, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

Peggy felt herself start to nod off under the influence of Daniel’s clever fingers at the back of her neck. It felt so good to be pampered like this. In their bed. In their house. With their children safe and-

“Daniel, where’s Jack?”

“Growing his hair out and joining an anti-government cult.”

Peggy levered herself up on an elbow to look at him, uncertain for about two seconds whether or not he was actually telling the truth. You could never quite tell with the things Jack went on about lately.

Daniel cracked a smile and she hit him with a pillow.

“You arse!”

His smile was completely unrepentant.

“What’s the more worrying part of that? Him growing out his hair or joining the fight against us?”

She walloped him with the pillow again.

“Utter, sodding arse!”

He burst into laughter, ineffectively trying to defend himself. Finally, he got hold of the pillow and pulled it from her grasp.

“Going to trade me in?” he asked, his eyes lit with humor.

Peggy knew he was teasing, and a part of her was thoroughly annoyed at him for it, but her face softened and she leaned down to peck his lips anyway.

“And lose all this? Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bloody hell, were hairstyles in the early sixties atrocious! Fun fact: after widespread popularity in the 50s, the pixie cut largely fell out of fashion until Twiggy (1966) and Mia Farrow (1968) made it slightly more popular again. But then, the 60s were all about increasingly long hair for both men and women. Poor Angela!
> 
> The Beatles first performed in the US in February of 1964. Angela lords it over all her friends at school that she's got more of a right to be a fan of the Fab Four than they do because she's half British (aren't all twelve year olds complete brats?). When Jack discovers the Rolling Stones a few month later, all out war breaks out between him and Angela over which group is better, which leaves both Peggy and Daniel completely nonplussed, Peggy because she doesn't understand what all the fuss is about and Daniel because he likes them both.


End file.
